[500 Kingdoms 04] - The Snow Queen

by Mercedes Lackey

  And possibly it was the nature of the position of Ice Fairy and the Palace she commanded itself. Certainly, no one was much inclined to attribute warmth and loving with names like those…. And The Tradition could work its will on Godmothers just as readily as on anyone else.

  And Aleksia was by now very, very tired of it.

  She was tired of playing the cold hostess to youths like Kay, who were obnoxious at the beginning of their tenancy and only became tolerable near the time when they were to leave. And at that point, of course, she had become the enemy, and they didn’t care to offer her more than the briefest nod of grudging courtesy. She was tired of the isolation; the Brownies were good little folk, but there were times when all she wanted was to sit in a village tavern, have a nice bowl of soup and some fresh bread, and listen to ordinary gossip. She didn’t visit her family anymore; that was just a disaster. People tiptoed around her, even her own twin, and acted as if they expected her to curse them with icicles if she were the least little bit provoked.

  And besides, every time she went there, it seemed that there was yet another child. Now, Aleksia enjoyed children in moderation. They could be very amusing. But she preferred to be able to give them back to mothers or nursemaids in an hour or so, and in the Palace…well, there was no escaping the children, because Katya had gotten this notion that it would be a fine thing for all of the nobles to send their offspring to the Palace to provide playmates and schoolmates for her brood. They were everywhere.

  And they looked at her as if they expected her to curse them with icicles.

  She sighed and stared at her fire—and managed to refrain from making any wishes herself. Wishes were dangerous things, as Kay had proved. She was not going to wish for anything stronger than that one of the servants would bring her a snack. Presently, one of the Brownies brought her cakes and tea, and she took up the book that had been lying there. The cakes were sweet and nutty, dense and moist; the tea was one of her favorites, with the flavor of almonds. The book was utterly forgettable, very light verse, but it was something to read, at least.

  From time to time, she looked up into a small mirror on a stand that held her plate of cakes and her cup. In it, she could see Kay laboring in his workshop. He seemed to be grinding lenses. She frowned.

  “What’s the cleverest lad in the world think he’s doing now, Pieter?” she asked the Brownie who came to refresh her tea. The little fellow, who looked exactly like her sister’s majordomo shrunk down to the size of a child, wrinkled his nose with amusement.

  “He’s making spectacles that will allow him to see us,” Pieter replied, chuckling, as his bright brown eyes twinkled. “He seems to think we’re spirits or something of the sort.”

  Aleksia sniffed. “He’d know better if he had paid half as much attention to his old nurse’s stories as he did to taking things apart,” she replied, and grimaced. “This is the most tedious stage of beating them into shape. Has he started trying to find a way to escape yet?”

  “Not yet, Godmother. He’s just starting to feel the edge of loneliness. It hasn’t really dawned on him yet that it only gets worse with time.” The Brownie offered honey for the tea; she tendered a nod of acceptance. “In my opinion?”

  “Your opinions are invariably good ones, Pieter.” She sipped the tea and felt the warmth penetrate into her chilled bones.

  The corners of the Brownie’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. Pieter had a wise face that would have looked very old indeed if it had not been for the perpetual hint of mischief about him. “It’s time to give him a view. We’re going to get a blizzard. Let him see it. I would say ‘throw another log on the fire under him,’ except that we really want the opposite effect.” Pieter chuckled at his own cleverness.

  Aleksia smiled. “The result is the same, a rise in discomfort. All right.” She concentrated a moment, holding her hand palm-upwards, until a tiny spark of white light wafted up out of her hand, hovered there for a few moments, then evaporated. That was her way of getting the attention of the Palace.

  The homes of all the Godmothers, whether they were Palaces like this one, fortified castles, lonely towers, or any other sort of dwelling, were living things. They responded to the needs of the Godmothers living there. Some of them were so good at it that entire rooms would grow before the Godmother herself realized she was going to need one. But some, like this one, needed prodding to wake them up.

  Veroushka always assumed it was because of the Palace’s immense age, but Aleksia had the feeling it had more to do with where it was. The Palace slumbered like a hibernating Bear, and whenever she needed to communicate with it, she always got the sense that she was looking in on its dreams.

  Presently, she sensed a difference in the room around her, and the mirror frosted over. Dim images that were certainly not Kay in his workshop moved behind the frost, pale figures that could have been human, or Elves, or spirits, or none of these things. She felt the sense of waiting all around her.

  “I would like windows in the boy’s rooms now, please,” she said aloud. “Like mine, if you would, quite weather and leakproof. I don’t need him getting ill from drafts.”

  She waited. The Palace generally took its time about these things.

  Finally, the mirror cleared and showed her a view of one of Kay’s two rooms. Now, instead of a blank, white wall, there stood an enormous glass-paned window, which looked down the mountain that the Palace stood on and across the valley to the unexplored peaks beyond. Everything was shrouded in a blanket of snow, of course, and it seemed waist-deep in most places. The mountains on the other side of the valley thrust their white peaks aggressively into the sky; the black storm clouds gathering just behind them provided a suitably ominous view should Kay return to his room before sunset.

  “Thank you!” Aleksia said. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t needful to thank the Palace, but she always did anyway.

  The mirror cleared again, giving her a view of nothing more than her own reflected image.

  “That looks like a bad storm,” the Brownie observed. Aleksia nodded. Her own rooms faced east and south, rather than west and north. She disliked being able to see the storms approaching; the wait before clouds finally descended and let loose their burden of snow always seemed worse to her than the blizzard itself.

  But there was no doubt this would have a profound impact on Kay. She could only hope that it would be for the better.

  Because if it was for the worse…

  She was going to wall him up in that workroom of his rather than be forced to listen to him whine and pout anymore. And she did not want to contemplate what she would have to do if he turned down any darker path.

  2

  ANNUKKA MAKELA SAT AT HER LOOM AND WOVE STEADILY, the soft woolen threads of her own spinning forming solid, equally soft fabric beneath her hands. The rhythm soothed her, as she passed the shuttle through the warp threads, tamped them down with a double-beat and passed the shuttle through again. Thread by thread, the fine brown woolen cloth built up beneath her hands; thread by thread, the subtle spell of warmth and protection she wove built with it. This was simple magic, hearth-and-fireside magic. So far as Annukka was concerned, magic was no special gift, and most women of the Sammi could do it, if they put their minds to it, if they took the time to learn how to concentrate in just the right way. The lives of the Sammi were intertwined with small magics. For most women, such things could be as natural as breathing, if they learned the tricks of it.

  But most women didn’t. In this, Annukka was special.

  Annukka was not certain why; it seemed a logical thing, to her. If you intended to keep your family safe, why not weave magic into their clothing? Yes, it took a little more time, you couldn’t just sit mindlessly at your loom and let the monotonous back and forth of the shuttle in your hand dull your mind. You had to think, to concentrate, to call up all the tales of narrow escapes and loved ones come safely home through peril. You almost had to speak to the power of magic the way you would make a pray
er. To Annukka’s mind, the effort was more than worth the reward, for what wife wouldn’t want to protect her children or keep her husband safe?

  But then…there was that edge of danger about magic. It didn’t always answer in the way you thought it would. And there was always a cost to it, too. The whisper of power that Annukka put into threads she wove had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere was generally her. Weaving in this way meant she tired far sooner than she would have had she been weaving ordinary cloth. When the power did not come from her directly, she generally found herself being shoved into doing something that was always inconvenient, and sometimes a bit dangerous. So even though this was very minor magic in the making, there were repercussions.

  Repercussions, Annukka thought to herself, as the sun warmed her back, as she listened to the birds in the eaves outside, as she took in the scent of wood smoke and the roasting fish that her neighbor was making for supper. There are always repercussions to everything, magical or not. Most people just don’t trouble themselves to see them.

  But weaving in this way meant that the cloak she would make from this fabric would not only keep the wearer warm no matter how killing the cold, it would deflect the mind of a pursuing hunter, so that the wearer would escape. There were wolves out there, and Bears, and uncanny things that were far, far worse than either. A cloak woven with magic would not come amiss.

  This was women’s magic, subtle and supple, and not like the magic of the Wonder-smiths, and the Warrior-Mages—magic that cut across the fabric of the world and pulled it into the shape that the man-magicians wanted. Women’s magic worked with the elements, rather than against them, wove through the threads of everyday life as Annukka wove her spell through the threads of her fabric. It took far more time to master than the sort that the men generally used, so perhaps this was why so few troubled themselves to do so. It took putting part of your heart into it, too. You had to care, and care deeply, to use this magic. Emotion became part of will.

  The last of the afternoon sun made the wooden walls of the room glow as if they had been gilded, and it warmed her as she sat before the loom. Outside the window, her bees droned in the borage planted along the cottage walls. It would be time to take the last collection of honey, soon, before she left the hives alone to store their over Winter supplies. Time for the last brewing of mead; Annukka smiled to think of the taste of that mead on a Winter night, sweet and sharp at once, and holding the memory of Summer in it. Time soon to collect nuts in the forest, herbs for Winter medicines and teas. Harvest was coming, and this cloak she was weaving would be needed to drive the cold Winter winds away.

  There were no other sounds within these walls but those of her weaving. Annukka lived alone on the edge of the great forest of firs, above the Viridian River. It had not always been so. She had once had a beloved husband, but he had taken her to wife in his old age and had lived only long enough to see their son grow to a stripling. Mikka had built this house with his own two hands, long before he had married her, and there was not a finer house in all of the village. Her friends teased her that she had married him for this house—but no, she had married him for himself.

  What a man he had been! His hair, once golden, still had gold threads among the silver, and his open, honest face had remained curiously unlined right up until the day he died. The only wrinkles were those around his bright blue eyes, and they deepened when he smiled. He had not been handsome; his jaw was too long, his nose too beaklike for that. But she would not have had him look any other way. She still missed him, his kindness, his strength of character, missed the feeling of his arms around her, sheltering her, missed the gentleness of his hands.

  The house was very like the man, plain, sturdy, substantial, sheltering. The walls were of peeled logs, matched for size, fitted so closely together that they hardly needed any chinking, and the Winter winds never whistled between them as they did in other homes. The house boasted two floors and three rooms, which was one floor and one room more than most.

  Two of those rooms were on the lower level, which had a wooden plank floor painstakingly smoothed until not even a thought of a splinter remained. One small room was the bedroom that Annukka had shared with her husband, and that now she slept in alone. The other held a big table that Mikka had also made, and two fine benches to sit at, as well as Annukka’s loom, spinning wheel and three stools that were works of art. Here was the hearth where she did her cooking, built from stones brought up from the river, and the kitchen cupboard, stout enough to keep out a Bear, cunningly fitted together so tightly not even the most determined mouse could find a way inside. The second floor, reached by ladder, had been their son’s as soon as he could climb unaided. It was empty now, and she used it to store fleeces and bundles of herbs.

  The pot simmering over the fire this late-Autumn afternoon breathed forth a savory aroma, and the bread just pulled from the oven built into the side of the fireplace added its scent to that of the soup. But there was only one wooden bowl and one carved spoon laid out on the table, for her son Veikko had gone in the Spring to seek his Teacher.

  Their people, the Sammi, did not have a King; they were one of the few lands that did not. Towns rarely housed more than a thousand people, and villages were much smaller. Half the population tended the migrating reindeer herds, which made it difficult to have a settled life. In Winter, the deer were always on the move, foraging for food as they traced paths through the trackless wilderness. Only in Summer could these folk settle, as their herds settled to graze on lush meadows and drop their calves.

  Life moved at the pace of the land here, not the pace of man. As their fathers and their father’s fathers had done, so did the people here. In Spring, the reindeer herds returned, to join the sheep and goats at their grazing, and with them, the herders. It was a slow life, but hardly a dull one. Those Bears, wolves and uncanny things found deer and man equally tasty; the storms of Winter could be unpredictable and equally deadly. In other lands, not one person in a hundred had to contend with the kinds of dangers that faced the Sammi every day.

  And in other lands, a child would probably have been forced into the paths of his or her parents. But not here.

  And Annukka would not have had things any other way. Even if our ways have sent my son far from home.

  Tradition was not so important here as being good at what you did. Sometimes Annukka wondered if that had to do with need, or with the fact that there was no single ruler here and no ruling hierarchy. With no king, and no order of landowning nobility beneath him, there was no one to answer to except to one’s own neighbors, who were not likely to take “because I said so” as an appropriate answer.

  She smiled at that thought. We are a stubborn people, we Sammi. A King would have a hard time with us.

  Whatever the cause was, when a child came of age, his or her runes were cast, and it was those runes that predicted the future for that child. Not what was to happen, but what he was to become.

  There was, for instance, the rune of the Herder, which meant you would tend domestic animals of one sort or another. There was Hunter, of course, which was self-explanatory, and Home, which meant you would do well with all possible domestic skills. Those marked with Healing were very much sought after, as were those of the Forge. There was the Salmon for Fishing, the rare rune of Fellowship—which meant the skill to lead people. More common than Forge was Craft for the smaller handicrafts, and Wood for the hewers and shapers. Rarer than Fellowship was Singer, which covered not only the making of music, but the composing of it, and the ability to play one or many instruments. Last of all were two that were seldom seen in these parts, Warrior and Mage.

  The boys and girls whose runes had been cast to follow the deer—the Herding rune with the Wanderer—took over the work of watching, tending, doctoring and milking them, under the direction of the adults. When the last of the frost left the fields, they were sown by those whose runes had marked them forever with the Plough.

  For in the la
nd of the Sammi, the man did not choose the occupation, the occupation chose the man. And at twelve, based on one’s runes, the child took its first steps into the adult world.

  Annukka smiled again to think of her son. Never had she seen a boy more confident than he was at that age. The runes had not surprised him; it was as if he had known from the time he was born what they would say, and he greeted the reading with a laugh and a nod.

  She passed her hand over the cloth already woven, to make sure the weft was consistent, and felt the tiny tingle of the magic there.

  It was possible to get mixed runes, of course; that was considered very, very lucky. All runestones had a blank side and an inscribed side, and it was theoretically possible for all of them to turn up inscribed, though Annukka had never, ever heard of that happening. Usually, not more than one or two showed their faces in a given reading. Three was highly unusual. Four, almost unheard of.

  Annukka was a mixed-rune child, of Hearth, Craft and Mage, although the Wise Woman who had cast them only whispered that third into her parents’ ears, and Annukka had not known, until the woman returned to teach her the Mage skills two years later, that she had been so marked. The Mage rune meant that she had the power, the ability, to do much more than the little domestic magics that all women could do. She had been schooled in some of the greater ones, magics that would permit her to do extraordinary things.

  She had used them no more than once or twice a year in her youth—only when the need was very great indeed. Even now, she did not much use the magic except in small things like her weaving, as the Wise Woman had taught her; the use of it could attract some evil to the user, and by extension, to her people. And so she had never become even so much as a Wise Woman, much less one of the Wizardly kind.